Now, good afternoon. Will you please tell me something about practice from your point of view? Yeah, and or your experience. Okay. Mm-hmm. to do all the talking. Nobody dares to rub their nose or anything? Yes. Thank you, Peter. Clowns are always willing to step forward. Clowns are always willing to step forward.

[01:17]

I would like to talk about my experience outside of the monastery. For me it is not so difficult to practice my sasen regularly, For me it's not that difficult to regularly practice my sasen. For me I find it more difficult the practice of mindfulness. I find it very difficult with all the impressions I'm exposed to to stay with the intention.

[02:34]

To stay with the intention to practice mindfulness. To practice mindfulness. So I have the intention, I enter a house to enter and not thinking but feeling what's happening. And ten meters before the house I have the intention and I pass the door and And five minutes later, oh, I forgot it. So that's all it's like. I had the intention to go into a house and then not thinking, but feeling it. And I had this intention ten meters in front of the door. And when I got in five minutes later, I remember that I had forgotten it. Maybe I should go outside again and reenter. That's a good idea.

[03:50]

He starts his performance at the living door. As a guy in tension, you know, I've got the time to be safe. Retirement. Yeah, why hasn't Peter arrived? Well, I've seen him six times come up to the door. But he keeps turning around and going back. Any other reports from the front line? from reporters embedded in the Dharma practice. Yeah. You want me to end it? I know. Well, you haven't finished. Oh, my goodness. That's good. Okay. Yeah. My other experience is that So my other experience is without doing special efforts in focusing or something.

[05:07]

I have quite often this memory or remembrance of specific mindfulness practice. So then not on an extremely high level but on a quite middle level of intention I have this connectedness with the breath. Or I go for a walk and the third thought comes Trying to see something without associations Or suddenly this thought arises, everything is impermanent.

[06:30]

I'm insecure, but there are constantly these ideas. I'm not sure if it's better to just do one thing or just this whole a bouquet of these things at once, of practice. Why did you say you were insecure? What do you mean, insecure? Because I had sometimes the impression that I should remain at one certain practice for a certain time. and not combine several things, and it's more or less not very conscious, but it happens very often.

[07:34]

Okay. Do you want to say that? Yes, it sounds good to me what you are doing And remember, Ken, no practice, the world doesn't make any sense if it doesn't start with acceptance. So initial mind, first mind, initial mind is ought to be acceptance. Yeah, non-corrected, uncorrected or non-corrected mind of Zazen

[08:37]

is basically rooted in acceptance. All right, so acceptance is our initial mind. Whatever the situation is, a terrible situation, an accident, a good situation, we have to start with accepting what it is. And if we want to change it, whatever the situation is, the change has to start from accepting what the situation is. Now I think too many of us have an initial mind, I want it to be different, I want it to be better. If that's your initial mind, most of the time your practice just won't take roots, won't go anywhere. Now acceptance isn't only your initial mind, it's also a dynamic of thinking, of mind, of thinking, of acting at all times.

[10:21]

It's not only your initial mind, it's also a dynamic that's in the midst of all your activity. Okay, so given all that, you know, How do we work with that? Each of us is different. So I would say that the way to think about it is sort of like we start our Zazen posture. Also, ich denke, die Art, wie wir darüber nachdenken können, ist so, wie wir mit unserer Zazenhaltung einmal anfangen oder beginnen. We don't correct our Zazen posture, physically correct it, say, continuously during Zazen. Wir verbessern unsere Zazenhaltung ja auch nicht unablässig die ganze Zeit während Zazen.

[11:29]

That would be... The sender would be wiggling. Castle, I thought we should have one of these cameras the police use that flashes the speeding cars. So if your backbone was too bent or something like that, the camera would go flash and you'd straighten up. And later you'd get a ticket from the Roshi. No, we just put most of our effort into the initial sitting down. Yes, you know, you get your posture as good as it can get, lifting feeling through your body, relaxation and so forth.

[12:41]

And then you just accept what your posture is. Now, after a while, it becomes easier to fine-tune our posture. So after five or ten minutes you might, you know, if you want, lift your posture a little or something. Yeah, but from then on you just let your posture be. You might open your mind up inside your body, some kind of feeling like that. Und ihr könnt vielleicht euren Geist innerhalb eures Körpers öffnen oder so ein Gefühl wie das.

[13:42]

But in general we leave ourselves alone. I say profoundly leave yourself alone. Aber im Allgemeinen lassen wir uns selbst in Ruhe und wie ich das sage zutiefst oder grundlegend in Ruhe lassen. Yeah. So if you take that attitude in your daily practice, in the daily life practice... If it occurs to you, okay, now we'll see if I can practice going in the door of someone's house... And leave your thinking at the door and just feel the room, feel the house.

[14:49]

So you may have that feeling, but you completely forget about it. But that's fine. You don't criticize yourself. Oh, I forgot. You just immediately accept the situation in which you forgot. That's all there is to it. But the fact that the intention comes up again itself is practice. Intention is actually a kind of intelligence. An intention holds the world up to us in a certain way. But maybe sometimes the world is too heavy and we drop it.

[15:56]

But intention, as walking toward the house, has held the world up to you in a certain way. How you're going to go in this house. So intention holds the world up to us and lights up the world. And the fact that we don't fulfill the intention is fairly unimportant. And that the intention keeps coming back is what really will make your practice. If the intention doesn't come back, you have no practice. So you really kind of start to live within your intention, not the fulfillment of the intention.

[16:57]

And if you start out with... planning to have one flower and you end up with a bouquet, I wouldn't complain. Okay, somebody else? Yeah. I'd like to add something similar. I try to observe my breath during the day, also during my work. Sometimes it depends on the pace of things. If things happen quickly, I forget it. Sometimes I make the observation that the observing of the breath unintentionally restarts, somehow as if it has been under the surface and then it comes up again.

[18:32]

Yes, that's exactly right. In other words, the stages of developing mindfulness are exactly that. You have something you're going to focus on, your breath or whatever. And at first you have to make an effort to bring it. Then it goes away. And yeah, everything's gone. But after a while, it gets easier to bring your attention back. So the first stage is making the effort to bring your attention. Der erste Schritt also ist, diese Bemühung zu machen, seine Intentionen darauf zu richten. The second stage is making the effort to keep bringing it back.

[19:38]

Der zweite Schritt ist, dass man die Bemühung macht, es immer unablässig, immer wieder darauf zurückzuführen. The third stage is, it's quite easy to bring it back. You just have to barely remind yourself and it comes back. And the fourth stage is it keeps coming back by itself. This is just a well-known experience. And the fulfilled stage, your mind just rests where you put it. Yeah, but I think for even mature practitioners, they're mostly in between it comes back by itself or just rests. And that also parallels your intention, coming back by itself. And although I, as most of you know, I present a lot of different practices. I give you a whole bouquet and then I stuff some in your back pocket and things like that.

[21:02]

By the time you find them, they're all wilted and dead. But what I expect you to do is to... is to pick one practice. And you decide to stay with it for a while. And you usually find actually some practices you didn't see are related or actually part of this one practice. And I find that some people are able to really take one practice and stay with it for three months or some length of time, three weeks or something.

[22:08]

And for other people, more or less staying with one practice ends up moving through several practices in a week or so, back and forth. That's just, we're different people, that's the way some people do it. And some people can't make up their mind about any practice and they try a whole bunch and generally they don't get results so they think, I'll try another one. And that doesn't work. So, yeah. Yeah, anyway, this practice is a craft.

[23:32]

And it's a kind of negotiation. And we find out what works for us and also what we actually do. And we find ourselves in the midst of that dynamic. Okay. Someone else? Since sometime I decided with a friend that every Wednesday we're gonna intentionally listen more or just focus on listening.

[24:38]

Do you listen together? No, she's near Cologne and I'm here. Do you telephone? In the morning we remember a few days and in the evening we talk a little bit. That's it. Pod-telephone. In the first weeks this was very interesting and we had lots to talk about what happened and we had interesting experiences. Then it got boring. Not really boring. So it was not really boring, just nothing new happened, but the fruit was that during the whole week the hearing was more stressed. And when I was in Sardinia with Akos on the boat, we slept in a big sleeping bag on the floor.

[25:56]

And the whole night I woke up and thought it was raining because the sound of the ship sounded like rain. And the whole night I woke up and thought it's raining, but it was the sound of the boat which sounded like raining. So each time I woke up, thinking said it's raining but I actually really know it's not raining and Akos also said he went out to check to see if it was raining. And I was really glad he went to check it. So then it was clear that it's very rare that we have sounds without meaning or explanation.

[27:03]

So since then I'm always on the search for sounds which are not in context. But it does not work. Oh, it was not surprising. It's been surprising when I've heard you scream. And that reminded me of when you spoke about intention and awareness. So if there's too much intention and attention on something then no awareness can arise.

[28:17]

So I'm asking myself if you step back from the intention a little bit or from the Yeah, attention a little bit, you step back from attention, and then there's this kind of more fluid zone. No, that there's more awareness in the place. So I'd like to know more about this relationship. between awareness and attention. Attention and awareness. And it was so clear before when you said, and then in the pause I completely lost it. Oh, okay. Well, I'll come back to that. You know, when I was in the... I left college for a while, for two years, and worked on ships.

[29:20]

Freighters going to the Near East from New York. Going to Africa. And one of the ships I was on was called the Robin Loxley. Mm-hmm. like Robin Hood, I, anyway. So, where my voxel was, my cabin, was, happened to be just where the ship would go back and forth from that point. It would turn this way, turn this way. And so, all this water that would come over on top of the deck and often and raced down because the waves would go over the ship sometimes. It would come roaring down and right at my fo'c'soe it would turn around and go back toward the front of the boat.

[30:33]

And every time it happened I dreamed I was in a washing machine. I'd wake up and I'd say, I'm not in a washing machine. I'm not going to send Akash out to chill. But it still felt like a washing machine. But the sound that's out of context or free of associations doesn't have to be a surprise.

[31:44]

Practice after a while makes us feel the whole world is our family. So everything feels familiar. Even the unusual, you kind of think, oh, this is a distant cousin or something like that. So it's when Gerhard and Peter and Iris, it must be Anton's turn. Boris? Anton? Anyone? Yeah. For me, practice also means to accept that life is sometimes very simple and banal.

[32:48]

Really? Okay, yeah. And easy. You mean banal? With banal, I mean... That's right, I think. Banal is like, for instance, I get up in the morning, I take care of the family, I go to work. I go back to bed, next morning I get up again, take care of the family, go to bed. One day I die. And there are some days were absolutely nothing spectacular happened. No friend comes, no phone call, no exciting experiences. Nobody says, I'm great, I'm beautiful, I'm tall. You're great and beautiful. Yeah, I know. Other people will tell you. My problem is that it's so simple somehow. Sometimes I meditate that I am sand grain in the desert.

[34:09]

And sometimes it's terrible. It's really to accept seriously, to settle myself, that it can just be very simple. And that's somehow a really tough practice for me. I agree. And one of the wonderful fruits, actually, formal practice and formal monastic practice. As you've got to follow this dumb schedule. And a large percentage of the time it's not really what you want to do. You get up and you have to wash the dishes or ring a bell or something and you'd rather go for a walk or go back to bed. Yeah, but after a while Just whatever you do is okay.

[35:24]

It's a kind of interesting shift. Whatever you do, your heart's beating. Your breathing. It doesn't make much difference whether your heart's beating while you're washing dishes, your heart's beating while you're taking a walk. A good, well-trained monk you can pick up and put down somewhere and come back later and they're still there, you know. And it sounds kind of boring, but I would say that bland or banal. But I would say that the closer you come to feeling the power and joy of simply being alive...

[36:26]

The power of aliveness. You don't mind so much what you do. But then there's also the fact that some things engage us and bring out our power more. Our work or reading or writing or something. But if we don't have that, we just still feel all right. So it sounds pretty good to me, this banal life you have. When I'm there, it feels quite good, but the pasthood, that's real practice for me. I knew a rather elderly woman who was the mother of a friend of mine. back in the 60s and she was in her 70s and she told me the first thought she remembers and somebody came to her crib or something like a baby's bed

[37:52]

to get her up and dress her and things. And she said, I remember thinking, is it going to be like this always, every day, dressing and undressing her? And she said, now I'm over 70, and yes, I was right. I remember a friend of mine, Renee de Tome, actually, went out and her little nephew was swinging. He was three. And he was singing. So she went up close to listen. What was he singing? And he was swinging, every day I do, every day I don't, every day I do, every day I don't.

[39:17]

Sophia is now more on the don't side. She's taught me that nine is not a number. Nine. Yeah. Okay. Someone else? I practice regularly and this breathing is really so that when you come, when you leave, you can stay with it. So I practice Zazen regularly and this breath is really something that comes and goes and it's something I can stay with. For me it was very nice when it frequently came when I was stressed. It came like a present. So my question is now, when I'm in a bodily activity, it also comes, but then I kind of take the lead of it.

[40:50]

I don't let it come, I lead it. You guide it, you direct it. Can you give me an example of directing it or what kind of... For instance, when I walk in the forest, pretty quick, yes, quick walking, then I take it and adapt it to my steps, my walking. Well, that seems normal and okay. Then it doesn't come like a present, I just take it into my hands. And then I determine with it my rhythm. And sometimes it really helps me to push up my rhythm somehow.

[41:52]

That's okay. It's a kind of athleticism. It's good, yeah. You know, contemporary, because of all this meditation stuff, it's influenced athletes. Is some long distance or not? No. Short distance runners, you know, 500 meters or 1,000 meters. Figure out every step and every breath. And then they visualize it and run those steps and that breath. You wouldn't want to do that all day, but sometimes for a walk in the forest. It's a kind of yogic power you can use if you want.

[43:12]

I've hiked various times in the Himalayas and such things. Where I tried to bring my breath and walking and mind together and not lose the focus and you kind of like float when you walk. And there I tried to bring my breath, my walking and my mind together and not to lose this focus. And then you almost start to float. But I notice that I then go into a much harder state. But I feel that I get into a much harder form of being than if it just kind of flows to me.

[44:16]

That's also true. So slow down sometimes. Okay, maybe it's a good time to take a break unless someone else can't control their hand. I thought your long distance Vijnana practice was quite... I've never heard anybody doing that before. I think it would be good. I think I can think of somebody I'd like to do it with, but they're nine hours different time zone. So let's say I'll be only hearing during the night. You do it during the day. But I'm sure it helps, almost as if you were sitting with someone.

[45:34]

Okay. I put some of the words I brought up today on this flip chart. And the last one's presence and presencing I didn't mention. Oh, I forgot to... What? No, that's being space. She said horizon, I forgot. Here. momentariness and impermanence.

[46:43]

So even in such a simple thing as what is our daily practice, you cannot actually find words like this that can help us, I think, define our daily practice. Is there somebody who wants to say something from before the break? One of my practices is always to return to my breath. I experience that like an island on which I can always recreate myself.

[48:14]

And that It carries me always so far, till I go back there and to recreate, because I forgot. It's like jumping from island to island. And the other part is just to see what my mind does, what I think. The other practice is just to look what my mind is doing or to say it a little more simply, to look what I'm thinking. That's like kind of hanging on to water or keeping my silk okesa position.

[49:24]

Experience that as something very exciting. What, the jumping from island to island? Or keeping your silko case on? Oh, to watch your mind, okay. Because he previously said you always offer us a whole bouquet. Okay. We should watch our mind, observe our mind. And that's actually now the first time that they're really continuously trying to do this. And it's also not kind of tracing it back to the origin. It's just a momentary looking, now, now, now.

[50:36]

Now, why did you mention tracing it back to the origin? Not tracing to... Why did you mention not tracing it back to the origin? What is... It takes this... Okay, that tracing back to the origin takes away this exciting part of it because that's something analyzing, thinking it back. How much have you practiced taking it back to its origin? For a while, over and over again. So that was the question. Okay, good. Yeah, thank you. Now, I again put these words for our prologue day up. I brought these words up.

[51:40]

as a way to kind of define them as a way to kind of hang the clothes of our daily, hooks for the clothes of our daily practice. Now, if you do take some of these hooks and notice the difference, as Iris said, between attentiveness and awareness... And that you need to step back a ways from attentiveness to allow awareness. And in a funny way you step back from attentiveness and more deeply into intention.

[52:58]

Okay, now I'm not trying to... by listing these words, bringing up these words. I'm not trying to analyze each one as a practice. Or present each one as a practice. Nor am I, except in a cursory way. Do you know the word cursory? Cursory means short way. trying to show the relationships among these things. Because certainly there's a relationship between zazen and mindfulness and breath and attentiveness, etc.

[54:05]

Yeah, but we can also just really become familiar with each one of these. It's a little like bringing some aspect of the kind of flow of our practice. Or the flow of our living, which is sometimes practice. And kind of bring it into attention. And have a feeling for it, for its value. Sukhirashi used to make a very interesting distinction between real and value. Real like reality?

[55:15]

Yeah. Like he wouldn't say each thing is real. or substantial or something or permanent but each thing has value and has a unique or particular value so we can notice the value of each thing The validity too, the truthfulness. Now, the degree to which things are truth or, in technical terms, a valid cognition,

[56:20]

The practice or the study or the observation of valid cognition is related to awareness. Then the practice or... The aspect or study or ability to notice things... and feel them as true or valid is related to knowing through awareness and not through conceptual constructions. But maybe that's too much to go into right now. Okay. But as Gerald just brought up zazen.

[57:29]

There's simply things in zazen that you really can't do through mindfulness. And one of them is what he brought up, is following a thought or a mood to its source. And this is a useful thing to become accomplished at. Which means that for a time in your zazen, when things appear, you'd say, where the heck did that come from?

[58:30]

There's a kind of train of associations. But from what station did this train leave? And you have to try to go backwards on the train. Like a hobo, you know. Anyway, that's another story. So something comes up. And you try to see if you can say, well, geez, what made me think of that or notice that? Yes, that did. Done that. And after a while you can find the source. And usually the source is in a perception. Or in a memory. But a memory is also often triggered by, of course, perceptions. So mostly, for most of us, our present mind is actually a past mind.

[59:53]

It was generated at some earlier period and you're just in the stuff of it. It's like headaches. Usually by the time you have a headache, it's too late. But if you get so you can notice when a headache starts, you can usually stop virtually all headaches. Migraines, I wouldn't say that's necessarily true, but ordinary headaches, yes. Okay, when you get in the habit of somehow repeatedly being able to trace a feeling or mood or thought to its source.

[61:02]

The fruit of it is you begin to bring the present mind out of the past into the present. And when things happen, you are present when they happen and not when you notice their associations later. then is man diesen Dingen gegenwärtig, wann sie passieren, und nicht erst dann, wenn man deren Assoziationen bemerkt. That's just a yogic skill. Das ist einfach eine yogische Fähigkeit. And then you notice the mind itself, as Gerald says, instead of noticing the kind of contents of mind. Und dann beginnt man, den Geist an sich zu bemerken, und nicht die Inhalte des Geistes, so wie der Gerald gesagt hat.

[62:03]

So, you know, that's a very, I haven't mentioned that for a while, very useful practice, this following thoughts, moods, etc., to their source. And discovering the present mind in the present. Und dass man den gegenwärtigen Geist in der Gegenwart entdeckt. I don't know if I can say, but this is also related to emotions. Das ist aber auch verwandt mit Emotionen. Emotion. Emotion. The motion, the movement that produces our feelings. Also Emotion, Bewegung, die Bewegung, die unsere Gefühle verursachen. I mean, in our contemporary culture, we, a lot of us, value emotions more than thinking.

[63:26]

And a result of the, you know, probably a result of the teaching and And yeah, teaching has come to us through psychotherapy and psychology. And we know that the damage is done when we're not true to our emotions. And when we don't express our emotions. And I worked with that when I was younger by always expressing my emotions. But I learned to express them internally. I developed a practice of feeling things fully, but not necessarily externalizing them. And meditation gives you a space where you don't have to repress or express.

[64:49]

So meditation... being space, an inner being space, gives us a wide space for allowing us to feel things fully. And whatever form they take, And I think it's helpful to say to yourself, anything any human being has done or felt could be part of me. Maybe we don't say it's me, we say it's also me.

[65:54]

If you say it's me, you get trapped in, I'm this terrible person or I'm guilty or something, you know. How can I think such horrible thoughts? But instead you say, well, this isn't me, but it's also me. It's a wider sense of what me is. Okay, now, but when you have developed this ability to, yogic skill of bringing the present mind into the present, Being present to the perception, percept, that brings something up.

[67:06]

Then... Emotions, what we call emotions... Emotive states, I don't know. We don't have a word exactly in English for... I don't mean emotions, but I mean... I don't mean emotional, that sounds like I'm very emotional. Ich möchte jetzt nicht emotional sagen oder so, aber bewegende Zustände. You know, it's interesting. In the area of feelings, emotions, etc., in English at least, we have a limited vocabulary, not a very subtle vocabulary for the territory. Im Englischen zumindest haben wir auf diesem Gebiet Gefühle, Emotionen, ein beschränktes Wort, Schatz und... In Japanese there's a much more subtle vocabulary for emotions.

[68:35]

I think there's something like 65 ways to say love. We in English have love, adore, like. Yeah, so... So, as I say, all emotions are rooted in caring. You don't get angry unless you care. Rooted in caring and then defined through ego, fear, defensiveness, etc., But if you can be present at the beginning of an emotion, where maybe still just a feeling,

[69:47]

then that feeling or emotion becomes a kind of power. And it becomes the basis for our thinking, acting and so forth. It makes me think of this storm we almost had. You feel something coming up like a storm. But it's something deep inside you or deep inside our big body. And you let it appear, you feel it. And then mostly it's absorbed into your activity. You don't have to, you know, try to feel it fully.

[71:15]

It's absorbed fully. And by the way, I think that if you do this practice, if you took on this part of the bouquet, To find a space in which you can feel things fully. It's good in that practice to actually exaggerate your feelings. You feel something slightly positive or slightly negative and you say, okay, I'm going to exaggerate. What if it's really positive or really negative? And my experience was most of the time I couldn't exaggerate it enough to get it to be what I really felt. Makes me think of the way when people fall in love.

[72:27]

Everybody around them sees, hey, these two people are falling in love. But if you ask them, they say, No, no, I just like this person. Because they don't want to give in to the feeling yet, so they say, oh, no, no, they're pushing it down. That's good, because we might fall in love too often. And most of us aren't so good at expressing love, feeling love fully without expressing it. But when you get so you can do that, you can be in love a lot.

[73:36]

Without destroying the people around you. So just going back again to Zazen. Zazen also has, of course, these psychological dimensions. that aren't in mindfulness practice like to be open to whatever human beings are. And for half an hour or an hour or so a day just letting come up what comes up. And sometimes it's humiliating. You think of your motives and doing certain things and you think, ooh, that couldn't have been me.

[74:47]

But then you find that usually we start explaining it to ourselves as if we were explaining it in court. We work out a whole system of justifying it. No one's listening but us, but we figure it all out. In case anybody accuses us, we have our excuses ready. But we're also trying to excuse ourselves within ourselves. And all that kind of mix-up process has to kind of open up, get loose. When we try to stop weaving it together with reasonableness, we find that there's a kind of primordial power and anger and

[75:52]

affection in us. Love, caring. So after a while, though, you really become familiar with this part of yourself. If it's particularly scary, and sometimes for some people they go through a period of being particularly frightened by what comes up in zazen, dealing with such things is part of daily practice. And if we don't deal with them, we'll stop practicing. If they are particularly frightening, Like some kinds of compulsive thinking.

[77:34]

I always recommend that you turn toward these difficult feelings or memories. But not so much that you're overwhelmed. But you never turn away. You always turn toward. And every time you turn toward, usually you can face a little more of it. And you're trying to develop the strength to sit through anything. And this is one of the actually... Fruits of Sashin practice.

[78:51]

If you get so you can sit through anything, not much scares you anymore. Because you know I can let myself feel these things fully, notice them, and I can still sit still and so forth. When it's too much and it drives you off the cushion. Or you stop practice. You're not so healthy. Sukhira used to say, if you can sit, usually if you can sit, you're pretty healthy. So there's these psychological dimensions of zazen practice, which I think even for the person who can mostly only practice mindfulness,

[80:00]

It's good to have some period of time of, I'd say at least two years of regular zazen. Okay, so these are definitions of things that we can notice our practice, through which we can notice our practice. But each one of them we can go into for seminars. Okay. Someone else. I must be talking too much, so I should... If you don't say anything, I think I'm talking too much.

[81:25]

But then if you don't say anything, I start talking too much again. So Andreas is about to rescue me. He comes to seminars because he often rescues me. Thank you. Now we'll see what he says. In my practice I noticed that nothing works without breath. That's my main practice. It became my main practice. And from there, by itself, some other practice came to the foreground. One of my practices is no choosing, no picking.

[82:38]

And the breath is as if it's leading me into this. And after the seminar in Kassel, Roshi said, we should at least be 50% of our wake time with the breath. He was right. And then we decided how much it is with us and we said if we're really good it's maybe 3%. But what I noticed It's not so often but it always comes from alone and it's by itself and comes more often by itself. It's seldom that I can rest one hour with the breath. But during an hour more frequently, for instance driving a car, it comes short but it comes more frequently.

[83:45]

Yeah, as I say, practice is, you know, a homeopathic medicine. And small doses do work. So that if you do, even sometimes, find yourself with your breath, it's a kind of promise. And I mean, if I'm realistic, it might be eight or ten years before it's 50% of the time. But by the time we're 40 or so, we know we have eight or ten years to waste. I mean, to use. Funny, you'd think that when you're... Older time would feel more precious, maybe when you're real old, but my experience is time felt precious when I was young, but now it feels like, jeez, another ten years.

[84:53]

I always thought that when you get old, time feels more precious. But when I was young, it felt like that, and now I think, my God, another ten years. I noticed when I was 38, I started feeling 40. And I noticed that between 60 and 66, I felt 60. Now that I've hit 67, I feel 72. I don't know. I don't feel any different, but I seem to be over the edge. Maybe I'm heading into my third adult life. But, you know, anyway, if your intention is there and there's sometimes a fruit of practice, it eventually becomes most of the time.

[86:20]

The fullness of your... I mean, we can take all of that back to the Buddhist first teaching starts with right views. And it's your views which destroy your practice or your views which bring your practice alive. If you practice zazen with... When your zazen is without awareness of your views, your zazen is just a posture. But at the same time, zazen is the basis, usually, the basis for transforming our views.

[87:22]

Yes. Okay, someone else? Okay, anyone else? Yes. The most important thing is that I observe. It's the act of my watching. Because when I'm here now, I don't pick and choose. Then I'm a very complex being. Because first of all I think in two languages.

[88:40]

Then I have my digestion going. Then I have my associating thinking. I've got my feelings. Bodily sensations. And all this goes on at the same time. And when I just drop this observation... If I only observe it, then I don't involve myself with all this If you don't observe it, if you do observe it, simply observe it, you're freer.

[89:55]

Then it doesn't make a difference if I observe my breath or my digestion. Or if I trace my associative thinking. For me the most important thing in a being space where I can just perceive all what I perceive. And my problems arise if I start identifying with something. and certainly i'm identified with a whole bunch of things yeah i understand and uh one thing we talked in castle quite a bit about is the difference between self and identity

[91:01]

And the process of noticing what we identify with. But I certainly agree that whether you're, the power of awareness, investigative or observing awareness, It can be whatever appears, your digestion, your breath, something in the...

[91:32]

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